1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to communications methods and devices, and more particularly to a real-time communications client architecture for various Internet Protocol networks such as 4G/LTE, Wi-Fi, WiMAX and 3G networks.
2. Description of the Related Art
Many different types of digital electronic devices require a communications capability. The number and type of devices has grown dramatically, and each device category, manufacturer, and service may have a wide range of device platforms and operating systems, and multiple application environments, and are required to interoperate across many networks and systems. Since applications typically are device and service specific, this has limited the availability and use of new functions and capabilities to selected devices. The time and investment required to implement a new capability across an entire, complex device portfolio continues to increase as the range and type of devices increases. Developers, device suppliers, and service providers need a better means to support many device types and models with lower incremental time, cost, and risk to fully utilize investments and to offer services and value to more customers and markets.
Long Term Evolution (“LTE”) is a relatively recent standard developed by the Third Generation Partnership Project (“3GPP”) for wireless communication of high speed data for mobile phones and data terminals. Voice over LTE (“VoLTE”) has become the preferred industry choice for providing voice services over LTE. However, implementation of LTE on digital electronic devices has been hindered by power consumption issues and, in the case of VoLTE, long implementation lead times.